Teacher has the kids covered

Thursday

Nov 15, 2012 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - For Alyssa Arrington, a dimpled and sweet-voiced third-grader at Spanos Elementary School, being cold when the weather gets frosty is not so much a hardship as a chilly and accepted reality.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - For Alyssa Arrington, a dimpled and sweet-voiced third-grader at Spanos Elementary School, being cold when the weather gets frosty is not so much a hardship as a chilly and accepted reality.

Alyssa, 8, dons the light hooded sweatshirt that is the heaviest article of clothing she owns and heads each day to school. When recess arrives, she goes to the yard with her friends and makes the best of her free time, chattering teeth and all.

"I sit down on a bench or I play with my friends," Alyssa said matter-of-factly this week. "But I shiver."

Spanos Elementary sits next to Gleason Park in a crime-riddled south Stockton neighborhood. Virtually all of the school's 500 students qualify for free and reduced meals, a key indicator of poverty.

Alyssa's teacher, Devyn Lach, is trying to make life a little warmer for Spanos' students. Lach, 29, has set up a page on Facebook titled "Simply Warm (Coats for Kids)."

Those who join the page will receive a message from Lach next week with the name and coat size of a specific second- or third-grader at Spanos and will be asked to donate a new winter jacket. As of Wednesday, 40 people had responded to the page, agreeing to donate coats.

"A lot of these kids have a lot of different struggles," said Lach, who ran a less formal coat drive for her students last year. "If I can help them at least be warm, at least take that off their plates, it's one less thing for them to worry about."

Four days ago, the temperature dipped to 31 degrees, a record low for the date, according to the National Weather Service. Based on the 72 third-grade students at Spanos, about half of the school's children lack the coats they need for the cold winter months ahead.

"Quite often some kids don't have coats hanging on their chairs at all or they just have hooded sweatshirts," Lach said. "It's starting to get cold. We're starting to see our breath. They're cold."

When Lach began her Facebook campaign, she sent notes home to Spanos' third-grade parents informing them of her plan. She said 36 parents responded, asking for coats for their children.

Lach has expanded her coat drive to Spanos' second-graders and she said her efforts have dovetailed with a unit she recently taught her students on community service.

"I'm hoping now they can see what they learned in action and learn that anybody, just one person, can make a difference," Lach said.

Alyssa, sitting in her warm classroom, already has made the connection.

"She's trying to help people to get clothes so they won't be cold in the winter," Alyssa said of her teacher. "It just helps the community."